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10 Dead, 6 Missing After Blast Destroys Apartment Building

PRIOZYORSK, RUSSIA — An explosion ripped open an apartment building Friday in northwestern Russia, killing at least 10 people and leaving six missing in the rubble.

The blast occurred at about 1 a.m., as most of the 230 residents of the five-story building slept. Priozyorsk is 75 miles north of St. Petersburg and near the Finnish border.

The explosion gouged a huge hole, three stories deep, in one section of the building. Officials suspect a gas leak, said Capt. Sergei Kalita, duty officer at the Interior Ministry office in St. Petersburg.

"People were in shock, running out of the building and some even jumping through the windows in panic," Oleg Martynov, a city official said.

Several shaken survivors, shown outside the smoldering ruins, said they thought an earthquake had struck. They said they heard a powerful explosion and then another weaker blast. The smell of gas was in the air.

Kalita said it took firefighters four hours to bring the blaze under control so that the search for survivors trapped in the rubble--and the dead--could begin.

The search was expected to take days, but hopes of finding more survivors dwindled as the temperature dropped below zero.

More than 600 rescuers and salvage workers with heavy equipment rushed to the scene.